Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact:  http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Sat, 28 Mar 1998
Author: Stuart Pfeifer and Tony Saavedra-OCR

LAWYER: TEEN'S KILLERS CALLED HIM 'NARC'

The attorney for Chad MacDonald's mother says a 97 -page police report
includes an eyewitness account of the youth's beating death.

The killers of Yorba Linda teen-ager Chad MacDonald called him "a
(expletive) narc" and made racial slurs while beating the youth at a
Norwalk drug house, the family's lawyer said Friday after reading Brea
police reports.

Attorney Lloyd Charton said the information - from a witness to MacDonald's
killing - was contained in 97 pages of police reports released Friday to
the 17-year-old's mother. Charton refused to give the documents to the
media, despite permission from a juvenile court judge and police
allegations that he was releasing only items favorable to his side.

Charton said at a news conference in Santa Ana that the documents also
disclose that a student told Brea police after MacDonald's body was found
March 3 that she had been warned to stay away from him because he had
fingered a separate Orange County methamphetamine lab and something bad was
going to happen.

The reports also said, according to Charton, that an Orange County
prosecutor told MacDonald on Feb. 19 that  drug charges against him would
be dismissed if he completed one last undercover buy. Assistant District
Attorney John Conley said he was prohibited by laws that protect juvenile
privacy from confirming or denying the allegation.

Charton said records showed that MacDonald made one supervised buy as a
drug informant, gave information to police that led to the shutdown of a
meth lab and bought drugs on one occasion without police authorization.

Brea Police Chief William Lentini said Charton's information was slanted,
inaccurate and incomplete.

"He's releasing stuff piece-meal," Lentini said.

He said information in the reports indicated that MacDonald was killed for
other reasons and not because he had been a police informant, but that he,
too, was precluded from commenting at length. Lentini has said from the
beginning that MacDonald wasn't working for Brea when he went to the
Norwalk home.